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Friends,
Plagues have always gripped humanity with an eerie fascination. From which dark corners did they emerge? By what insidious means did they spread their deadly reach? How many lives were snuffed out in their relentless path?
In what horrific ways did these victims meet their end? And how were their bodies laid to rest in the wake of such devastation? Plagues lay bare the raw fabric of society, exposing the depths of social norms, religious rituals, medical breakthroughs, and the very essence of human connections.
But there is one plague that intrigues me more than any other—a plague that is rarely talked about or even taken seriously. A plague, I believe, that highlights the interpersonal relationships and people’s desire to escape reality.
The Dancing Plague.
A Dancing Plague?
We’re journeying back to the year 1374. In numerous towns along the Rhine River valley, hundreds of individuals were overtaken by an inexplicable compulsion to dance. They danced for hours or even days, barely stopping to rest or eat. Within weeks, this frenzy had spread across vast regions of France and the Netherlands, and it was only after several months that the epidemic abruptly ended as quickly as it started.
Then it reappeared, explosively, in the city of Strasbourg in 1518. Records indicate that it then affected over 400 men, women, and children, causing dozens of deaths.
One account was written by the medieval physician Paracelsus, who visited Strasbourg eight years after the plague struck and chronicled it in his Opus Paramirum.
“In their madness people kept up their dancing until they fell unconscious and many died.” -Chronicle of the dancing plague in the Strasbourg archives
What caused the Dancing plague?
I believe that to truly understand the Dancing Plague, you have to follow the bread crumbs of history. Overlay a map of the Dancing Plague’s reach with the catastrophic Rhine floods of 1374, and you’ll find a perfect, damning match.
The river didn’t merely rise—it exploded 34 feet upward in a biblical surge, devouring city walls that had stood for centuries. Water crashed through homes, transforming marketplaces into lakes of sewage and debris.
Bloated corpses—human and animal alike—bobbed obscenely through church doorways and banquet halls, their putrid stench hanging in the air for weeks. The raging waters tore through the landscape with such violence that the lower Rhine—a waterway that had defined civilization for a millennium—was permanently wrenched into an entirely new course.
The Rhine River—Europe’s busiest waterway and commercial lifeline—became a channel of ruin when it overflowed. Its waters carried away not just homes and livelihoods, but the very infrastructure of medieval commerce.
Survivors who waded through the receding floodwaters found themselves already walking in the shadow of another catastrophe: the Black Plague had ended its deadly march across the continent twenty years earlier.
Before the Dancing Plague of 1518, famine gnawed through the countryside while the miniature ice age strangled crops in killing frost. In Strasbourg—a desperate city clinging to the Rhine’s edge—mothers watched their children’s bellies swell with hunger as bread prices soared beyond reach.
Farmlands became graveyards of dead soil. Skeletal families staggered into cities, hollow-eyed and ravenous, only to find themselves face-to-face with a new horror—syphilis—that rotted flesh from bone and drove victims to madness.
Who started dancing first?
It’s the middle of July, and under the blazing summer sun, a woman named Frau Troffea walks into the streets and starts dancing. There is no music, yet she continues to dance, both day and night. Soon, another resident of Strasbourg joins her. Then another follows. Gradually, the number of dancers increases.
City officials are gripped with alarm. Why are residents, both young and old, frantically dancing in the streets? This isn’t a joyous celebration; their expressions are twisted with distress. They move like puppets under an unseen force, eyes vacant, oblivious to their actions. Some dance with a relentless, feverish energy until their bodies give out, collapsing from sheer exhaustion.
“A terrible disease spread,” city clerk Sébastian Brant writes, “so that around 50 people danced day and night, which was painful to see.”
City officials consult with local doctors, who conclude that the condition is a fever likely caused by overheated blood affecting the brain. According to them, the most effective way to reduce a fever is by sweating it out.
So, they bring the sick individuals to a common location: the horse market, where a wooden platform has been constructed. They enlist musicians, including drummers and fife players, to play music and dancers to perform alongside the ailing.
Loved ones gather at the edges of the dancing crowd, clutching bowls of broth and bread, desperately trying to press sustenance into the mouths of dancers who refuse to pause even as their lips crack from thirst.
For the abandoned—those without family to tend them—the city council employs caretakers who shield the afflicted from jeering onlookers while attempting to guide their puppet-like movements away from walls and wells.
Some dance until their feet are torn raw, the skin shredded away, exposing bone and sinew beneath. They collapse, bodies ravaged by exhaustion, barely held together as they’re caught mid-fall, weak and utterly spent.
It is spiraling out of control. The pounding music, the surging crowd, and the wild antics only seem to draw in even more dancers, swelling their ranks to a throng of possibly 400. In a desperate move, the city clamps down in August, banning street dancing and silencing the music in a bid to restore order.
Priests get involved
The city, not knowing what else to do, sends the remaining dancers on a pilgrimage.
They stagger into the cave-shrine of Saint Vitus, carved deep in the Vosges mountains near Saverne, their bodies still twitching with involuntary movement. Blood seeps through their bandages as crimson shoes are forced onto their mangled feet. Writhing in agony, they are dragged in circles around a wooden figurine whose hollow eyes seem to follow their torment.
The priest’s voice booms against stone walls, his fingers pressing crosses into their flesh with oil. Holy water hits their faces, each droplet hissing the name of Saint Vitus as the dancers convulse and weep, begging for release.
Eventually, their symptoms subside.
The dancers’ bodies grow still—whether through Saint Vitus’s intervention or merely because isolation has starved the contagion of new dancers, no one can say. The dancing plague releases its grip on Strasbourg like a fever breaking, and officials declare an end to its season of madness.
Final Thoughts
The Dancing Plague erupts across Europe not once, but repeatedly throughout history. Its recurrence, rather than its singularity, captivates my attention. Within these outbreaks lies a window into collective psychological collapse—the human mind’s response when communities endure prolonged environmental hardship and physical suffering beyond what they can bear.
During an era lacking weather warning systems, global medical networks, social services, or instant news reporting, people’s imaginations were left to run wild with the unknown. The Dancing Plague might be interpreted as either an escape from reality or a self-inflicted retribution for what was perceived as divine displeasure with humanity.
In my opinion, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the historical development and influence of mass hysteria, the Dancing Plague should be studied further to examine its recorded impacts on communities. Of course, this is just my personal viewpoint. Perhaps it’s merely a fascinating tale.
What do you think?
For those hungry to explore more, click below to find additional readings:
The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. In The Great Mortality, author John Kelly lends an air of immediacy and intimacy to his telling of the plague’s journey from the steppes of Russia, across Europe, and into England, killing 75 million people—one third of the known population—before it vanished.
The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness. A gripping tale of one of history’s most bizarre events, and what it reveals about the strange possibilities of human nature
Until next time, Keep Reading and Stay Caffeinated.
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Sources:
The Dancing Plague: A Bizarre Epidemic – Medieval History
The Dancing Plague of 1518 — The Public Domain Review
What are your thoughts?